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A Company and its Data 13

– “Master data is simply the data associated with core
business entities such as customer, employee, supplier,
product, partner, asset, etc. This data can reside in many
different systems. For example, customer data may reside in
a sales force automation system, an e-commerce system, a
marketing system, a billing system and a distribution
system. Equally, product data may reside in product
development systems, manufacturing systems, planning
systems and storage systems. A trait of master data,
therefore, is that subsets of it are needed in multiple systems
to control the continuity of business operations as processes
progress throughout the enterprise.” [FER 08].

We will give our definition based on the fact that data
falls into the category of reference and master data in one of
the following situations:

– data is initialized and updated before use by
transaction systems;

– data is duplicated across multiple systems. This
frequent situation opens up the scope of use for the reference
and master data widely;

– data is exchanged with third parties situated outside
the limits of the company’s IT system.

An MDM system unites the governance functions of this
data and makes them accessible for business users. It is
based on a unified data model, valid in the following three
situations: the same piece of data can be validated before use
by transactional systems, it can be duplicated in multiple
databases, and exchanged with third parties, all at the same
time.